After the Fall

War and Occupation in Irène Némirovsky's Suite française

Nathan Bracher

Publication Year: 2012

In this work, the first critical monograph on Suite française, Nathan Bracher shows how, first amid the chaos and panic of the May-June 1940 debacle, and then within the unsettling new order of the German occupation, Némirovsky's novel casts a particularly revealing light on the behavior and attitudes of the French as well as on the highly problematic interaction of France's social classes

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Texas A & M University for the Faculty Development
leave that allowed me to complete my research and draft the
initial manuscript of this book, and for the generous grant awarded
by the Program to Enhance Scholarly and Creative Activities through
the Office of the Vice President for Research ...

Introduction

One would be hard-pressed to make a more compelling case for the
enduring potency of World War II in contemporary French culture
than that offered by Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française, which was
finally and dramatically discovered and published in 2004, over sixty
years after the author’s tragic death. ...

Chapter 1. Timely Representations

With respect to the traumatic events in 1940, Némirovsky presents
an intriguing paradox that may explain a good deal of the
present-day confusion surrounding her attitude toward the war. In
the wake of Hegel, who, in surveying the succession of human events
claimed to read the “prose of the world” ...

Chapter 2. Narrating the Fall

Irène Némirovsky, as we have seen, refused to rally her Suite française
under any particular banner and resolved to maintain her composure
in the face of the increasingly sinister events of the early war
years. In her fictional narrative as well as in her personal life, she
displayed neither cynical detachment nor wounded isolationism. ...

Chapter 3. Epic Suffering

For a close paraphrase of Némirovsky’s perspective on private lives
and collective destiny during the May–June 1940 debacle, we can cite
one of Tempête en juin’s major protagonists, Philippe Péricand, the
priest who takes on the task of accompanying a group of delinquants
and orphans to safety in the southern provinces. ...

The specific contributions of Némirovsky’s narrative of the May–
June 1940 debacle, including not only its strengths, but also certain
limitations, come into sharper focus when we compare Tempête en juin with several other prominent narratives of the defeat and exodus
also written during the early years of the Occupation ...

Chapter 5. Occupational Hazards

Given the traumatic events and divisive discourses occasioned by
Hitler’s conquest and occupation of French territory, there is no little
audacity in Némirovsky’s choice of Suite française and Dolce as titles.
These musical terms would normally suggest a set of artful, delicately
elaborated musical compositions ...

Chapter 6. Portraits of the Nazis as Young Men

France’s stinging defeat brought into full public view the Wehrmacht
soldiers marching down the Champs-Élysées, relaxing in
countless provincial Cafés de Commerce, and camping in farms and
châteaux, in each case profoundly changing the visible texture of everyday
life. ...

Chapter 7. Private Lives and Public Stories

After the sound and fury of Tempête en juin, the second installment
of Némirovsky’s war narrative portrays a relative return to normal.
Suggesting a “soft” or “sweet” musical interlude, the title Dolce
functions as a metaphor for the whole series of plot developments. ...

Chapter 8. Reaching the Rendezvous with Destiny

In order to fully discern the implications of Lucile’s intimate but
never-consummated conversations with Bruno that lead up to her decisive
refusal to make love with this culturally refined and emotionally
sensitive member of the Wehrmacht, we cannot take her at face
value. ...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.